Way back in February, Western Digital released a network hard drive that would be a great solution for families to share their files...almost. The My Book World Edition works not only as a backup drive for Windows PC's, but also allows authorized people to access any file on the drive via a web browser, so if you're at Grandma's for Christmas and want to grab that home movie you made to show the family, you can just log in via Grandma's laptop.

Well, maybe. You see, Western Digital figures you're going to use this drive to distribute copyrighted content to the vast, er, 5 people you can authorize to access it, so they've limited the file types that can be shared. Common audio and video formats cannot be shared or accessed via the browser, so while you can grab Word files or photos, but movies or any audio files cannot be accessed.

I can understand wanting to block piracy, but given that only 5 people can access the drive, are they really preventing piracy or just crippling their users' ability to use their own hardware and their own files? If people really want to share files illegally, they'll use any number of file sharing applications with a much cheaper hard drive. The only people blocked here are honest users.

If you want to share files with only certain people, don't waste your money on something like this. Just use the free Alliance for Windows, Mac OS X, and Linux and share with as many friends and family as you want, all securely.